woensdag 13 mei 2009

Pimp my telescope!

The Hubble telescope, world’s largest telescope of 13,3 meters in space, needs some “patch-up” work. The repair work will extend the life of the telescope with five more years. In 2020 it is going to crash down on earth. The mission is considered to be very exciting since the Colombia disaster in 2003 which killed all astronauts. Furthermore, the instruments that need to be fixed are very difficult to repair. Eric Smith, the Hubble programme scientist at NASA, said: "We are going to be repairing instruments that have failed but were never designed to be fixed by astronauts. That is going to be the real challenge." If they succeed, the result will be astonishing because the quality and sharpness of the pictures will be unprecedented. The Hubble telescope has given so much significant information about the age and birth of the universe. If we know more about the things around earth, it will also tell us something about our planet. The more we know about the universe the more we know about life itself.